Presidential Reconstruction: 1865–1867

The Postwar South and the Black Codes: 1865–1877

Events

1868
House of Representatives impeaches Andrew Johnson
Senate acquits Johnson
Fourteenth Amendment is ratified
Ulysses S. Grant is elected president

1870
Fifteenth Amendment is ratified

Key People

Andrew Johnson -
17th
U.S. president; impeached by the House of Representatives in 1868 but
later acquitted by the Senate

Edwin M. Stanton -
Secretary of War under Lincoln and Johnson; was dismissed
by Johnson, prompting House Republicans to impeach Johnson

Ulysses S. Grant -
18th
U.S. president; formerly a Union general and, briefly, secretary
of war under Johnson

Radical Reconstruction

After sweeping the elections of 1866,
the Radical Republicans gained almost complete control
over policymaking in Congress. Along with their more moderate Republican
allies, they gained control of the House of Representatives and
the Senate and thus gained sufficient power to override any potential
vetoes by President Andrew Johnson. This political
ascension, which occurred in early 1867, marked
the beginning of Radical Reconstruction (also known
as Congressional Reconstruction).

The First and Second Reconstruction Acts

Congress began the task of Reconstruction by passing the First Reconstruction
Act in March 1867.
Also known as the Military Reconstruction Act or simply
the Reconstruction Act, the bill reduced the secessionist
states to little more than conquered territory, dividing them into
five military districts, each governed by a Union general.
Congress declared martial law in the territories, dispatching troops
to keep the peace and protect former slaves.

Congress also declared that southern states needed to
redraft their constitutions, ratify the Fourteenth Amendment,
and provide suffrage to blacks in order to seek readmission into
the Union. To further safeguard voting rights for former slaves,
Republicans passed the Second Reconstruction Act, placing
Union troops in charge of voter registration. Congress overrode
two presidential vetoes from Johnson to pass the bills.

Reestablishing Order in the South

The murderous Memphis and New Orleans race riots of 1866 proved that
Reconstruction needed to be declared and enforced,
and the Military Reconstruction Act jump-started this process. Congress chose
to send the military, creating “radical regimes” throughout the
secessionist states. Radical Republicans hoped that by declaring martial
law in the South and passing the Second Reconstruction Act, they
would be able to create a Republican political base in the seceded
states to facilitate their plans for Radical Reconstruction. Though
most southern whites hated the “regimes” that Congress established,
they proved successful in speeding up Reconstruction. Indeed, by 1870 all
of the southern states had been readmitted to the Union.

Radical Reconstruction’s Effect on Blacks

Though Radical Reconstruction was an improvement on President Johnson’s laissez-faire Reconstructionism,
it had its ups and downs. The daily lives of blacks and poor whites
changed little. While Radicals in Congress successfully passed rights
legislation, southerners all but ignored these laws. The newly formed
southern governments established public schools, but they were still
segregated and did not receive enough funding. Black literacy rates
did improve, but marginally at best.

The Tenure of Office Act

In addition to the Reconstruction Acts, Congress also
passed a series of bills in 1867 to
limit President Johnson’s power, one of which was the Tenure
of Office Act. The bill sought to protect prominent
Republicans in the Johnson administration by forbidding
their removal without congressional consent. Although the act applied
to all officeholders whose appointment required congressional approval, Republicans
were specifically aiming to keep Secretary of War Edwin M.
Stanton in office, because Stanton was the Republicans’ conduit
for controlling the U.S. military. Defiantly, Johnson ignored the
act, fired Stanton in the summer of 1867 (while
Congress was in recess), and replaced him with Union general Ulysses
S. Grant. Afraid that Johnson would end Military Reconstruction
in the South, Congress ordered him to reinstate Stanton when it
reconvened in 1868.
Johnson refused, but Grant resigned, and Congress put Edwin M. Stanton
back in office over the president’s objections.

Johnson’s Impeachment

House Republicans, tired of presidential vetoes that blocked
Military Reconstruction, impeached Johnson by a vote
of 126–47 for violating
the Tenure of Office Act. The Senate then tried Johnson in May 1868 in
front of a gallery of spectators. However, the prosecutors,
two Radical Republicans from the House, were unable to convince
a majority of senators to convict the president. Seven Republican
senators sided with Senate Democrats, and the Republicans fell one
vote shy of convicting Johnson.

The Politics of Johnson’s Impeachment

Although Johnson did technically violate the Tenure
of Office Act, the bill was passed primarily as a means to
provoke Johnson and give Radical Republicans in Congress an excuse
to get rid of him. Indeed, Johnson’s trial in Congress exposed the
real reason that House Republicans impeached the president: he had
ignored them in the process of crafting Reconstruction policies,
and they wanted retaliation.

The Senate, however, acquitted Johnson, aware that a frivolous impeachment
would have set a dangerous precedent. If Congress had removed a
president from office simply on the basis of a power struggle between
the president and Congress, they might have endangered the system
of separation of powers—an integral part of U.S. government. Although
Johnson had stubbornly opposed Congress, he had not violated the
Constitution and was not guilty of committing “high crimes and misdemeanors.”

In addition, another factor was the fact that, because
Johnson had no vice president, the president pro tempore of
the Senate was next in line for the presidency should Johnson be
impeached. This man was a rather liberal Republican named Benjamin
Wade, whose politics did not sit well with certain other senate
Republicans. Some of these Republicans deemed the prospect of a
Wade presidency just as unpalatable as the dangerous precedent of
impeachment and thus voted with the Democrats to acquit Johnson.

The Fifteenth Amendment

The Thirteenth and Fourteenth Amendments had
abolished slavery and granted blacks citizenship, but blacks still
did not have the right to vote. Radical Republicans feared that
black suffrage might be revoked in the future, so they decided to
amend the Constitution to solidify this right. They also believed
that giving blacks the right to vote would weaken southern elites,
who had regained political power in the South. In 1869,
therefore, Congress passed the Fifteenth Amendment,
granting all American males the right to vote. Congress also required
secessionist states that had not yet reentered the Union to ratify
the amendment in order to rejoin. By 1870,
three-quarters of the Union had ratified the amendment, and it became
law.

Black Voters

After the amendment’s ratification, southern blacks flocked
to the polls. By the beginning of 1868,
more than 700,000 blacks
(and nearly the same number of poor landless whites) had registered
to vote. Not surprisingly, virtually all of them declared themselves Republicans,
associating the Democratic Party with secession and slavery. Black
civic societies and grassroots political organizations began to
sprout up across the South, most led by prominent blacks who had
been freedmen since before the Civil War.

Soon, black voters gained majorities in South Carolina,
Alabama, Louisiana, Florida, and Mississippi and were able to facilitate
Republican plans for Reconstruction. These voters elected many black
politicians in the majority states and throughout the South:
fourteen black politicians were elected to the U.S. House of Representatives,
and two to the Mississippi State Senate. These new state governments
funded the creation of roads, hospitals, prisons, and free public
schools.

The Fifteenth Amendment in Perspective

Prior to 1866,
most Republicans had opposed black suffrage. Even the “Great Emancipator”
himself, Abraham Lincoln, considered giving the right to vote only
to blacks who were freedmen before the Civil War and those who had
served in the Union Army. Most moderate Republicans saw freedmen
suffrage as unnecessary until they realized that the Republican
Party would never gain influence in the South unless blacks had
the right to vote. Blacks would support the Republican Party en
masse, so ratifying the Fifteenth Amendment guaranteed Republicans
this support.

Ironically, the Fifteenth Amendment also forced reluctant northern states
to give blacks the right to vote. Even though most of the new postwar
state constitutions in the South gave blacks the right to vote,
many northern states refused to follow suit, because they considered
universal manhood suffrage a solution unique to the South that was
unnecessary in the North.

The amendment also granted voting rights to poor whites,
especially in the South. Prior to the Civil War, landowners were
the only social group who had the privilege to vote, excluding the
majority of poor, landless whites from active political participation.
The Fifteenth Amendment thus brought sweeping changes for blacks,
poor whites, and politics in general in the United States.

Reaction from Suffragettes

The Fifteenth Amendment did not secure the right to vote
for all Americans: women still did not have the right to vote, and
leaders in the women’s suffrage movement felt betrayed
by their exclusion from the amendment. Prior to the Civil War, the
women’s suffrage movement and the abolition movement had
been closely related: both groups strived to achieve political and
civil rights for the underrepresented in society.

After the Union victory, prominent women in the movement, such
as Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony,
saw a window of opportunity: they believed that with progressive,
Unionist support in Congress, blacks and women would achieve enfranchisement.
Radical Republicans in Congress believed otherwise. Republicans
assumed that if Congress granted all men and women the
right to vote, their party would lose support in both the South and
North. As it turned out, women would have to wait almost fifty more
years for the passage of the Nineteenth Amendment that granted them
the right to vote.